Alan Benson
Alan Benson is a junior at the ILR School. He is from Palm Desert, California and graduated from La Quinta High School.
“I would strongly recommend entering your freshman year with an open mind. If something really interests you, then consider making it part of a larger academic pursuit! Then, brainstorm all of the ways you can really get ownership over your topic—where flexible, take classes and write essays on your interest, study abroad, and talk to your professors over office hours about how you can develop your interest. Opportunities will follow.”
Alan is presently pursuing his research at Oxford University in the U.K.
“I became involved in student research early because I wanted to make a commitment that could really motivate and define my undergraduate career. I spoke with Professor Maria Cook, who helped me obtain an ILR undergraduate academic research fellowship which allowed me to stay at Cornell for my first summer. In my sophomore year, I was accepted into Cornell’s Presidential Research Scholars and the opportunity to spend a year abroad at Oxford University.
“Professor Cook started me off on the basics, which certainly became instrumental for my later work. I performed literature searches, compiled and compared labor statistics from a variety of sources, did fact-checking, and learned how to use the less-utilized luxuries of Cornell’s library. In return, I got to watch a book mature from an embryonic outline to a manuscript that seemed to have its own life!
“Almost without knowing it, the skills I learned that year became part of my academic routine. When Professor Cook proposed a spin-off that compared trends labor reform among developing countries, I constructed case studies relying on the tools I’d learned the previous year. Then, the training wheels really came off when I started thinking about my CPRS and honors thesis!
“I was lucky enough to have the ideas for my thesis come naturally, almost as a by-product of what I’d want to do anyway. As my work with Professor Cook continued, I found my own narrower interests, and began to read about the conditions that allow social dialogue in developing countries to succeed. To gain another perspective, I went to Oxford (where I am now) to study economics, emphasizing coursework that would complement my interests. A tutorial on microeconomic theory inspired me to adapt game theory to tripartite dialogue on neoliberal labor reform in developing countries.
“The most difficult part was getting started. There is a learning curve when it comes to working on larger projects, but when you overcome these, your curricular work becomes much easier in comparison. Every research project—and often their subsets—will require you to just sit down and do background work so that you can read the literature that your subject demands. However, the wonderful thing about the university is that there are so many support structures that really catalyze this process, so you can efficiently get going. Professors, librarians, and nerdy friends will always be there.
“I gained so much it’s hard to imagine where I should begin—I learned how to do research, how to critically analyze problems, and how to do so keeping an open mind, without being daunted by shortcomings of existing literature. Even in everyday conversation, you begin to dwell on statements and think about how they can be measured. And yet, I feel as though the most valuable experience was all of the fun I had! When I first became involved in research, I was hoping for an academic capstone experience, but I feel like I got a personal one as well.
“I was initially worried about ‘defaulting’ to law school without looking into whether the field would be a reasonable fit. Now, my work with Professor Cook and others (particularly, ILR Professors Lance Compa and Bill Sonnenstuhl) has made me enthusiastic about pursuing graduate studies in the social sciences, and I’m leaning towards PhD programs in organizational behavior.”
